


don't need a prayer (if you've seen the light)

by loonyBibliophile



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1.10 The Lost Weekend, Betty's POV, Episode: s01e10 Chapter Ten: The Lost Weekend, Episode: s1e10 The Lost Weekend, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: The song playing on the jukebox at Pop’s isn’t what Betty imagined would be playing in the background of her life when she realized this was _It_.(A short drabble exploring Betty's thoughts and feelings during The Diner Scene)





	don't need a prayer (if you've seen the light)

_There is something very, very wrong with me. Like, there’s this darkness in me that’s overwhelming, sometimes, and I don’t know where it comes from, but I think it’s what makes me do these crazy things…_

The song playing on the jukebox at Pop’s isn’t what Betty imagined would be playing in the background of her life when she realized this was _It_. This was the moment that would define the rest of her existence, as Jughead took in her words, quiet and stuttering, and then held her hands up to his lips, pressing a kiss as gentle as a sigh against her skin.

It makes her think, crazily enough, of Romeo and Juliet. The passage from that fateful party, whispered refrains of _hand to hand is holy palmers’ kiss_ and _let lips to what hands do; pray_ , and in all Betty’s years of Sunday and holiday church services, she has never once understood prayer, but watching Jughead press his lips to her hands shakes her to her very foundations. The way he holds them, tight but gentle, the way his lips ghost over her skin, like even with her scars she is something precious— something holy. But unlike the others she’s thought to reach for, to care for, to kiss, he is not afraid to break her. He is not afraid to look too closely, see the hairline cracks in delicate porcelain, and when he sees them he does not run, does not touch her like she is an empty eggshell or an antique glass cup.

It is this moment— in the diner listening to a song she has never heard before, Jughead’s lips, her shaking hands— that Betty realizes this is _It_ , that this boy, Jughead Jones, is _It_. This is the rest of her life. 

They’re children— Betty is so aware they are just children— and it’s absolutely crazy, but she can feel it in the deepest, truest parts of her. She knows she loves him and she knows he’s it in the very same moment, and her mother would call her crazy, but Betty doesn’t care. So what if Romeo and Juliet fell in love at sixteen and six people died? So what if all their parents met young and fell apart spectacularly? They were not Romeo and Juliet. They were not their parents. Jughead said as much when he crawled into her window and charted a new path for her life by pressing his lips to hers, and here, now, he was doing it again, clearing the clouds away until she could see the path in front of her, clear as noon day sun. 

Jughead kisses the scars and marks that litter her palms, and Betty knows she will love him for the rest of her life, because he makes her feel _real_. To Jughead, she is not the perfect girl next door or the broken daughter or the disappointment. She’s Betty Cooper, and she’s _real_ and true in a way she’s never felt with anyone else. So she grabs his face and she kisses him, leans into his body and hopes that maybe— maybe— he can feel this revelation streaming from her in waves. Like maybe she can make him feel real too. Make him know that— like the sun will always shine its rays through space and time to reach the earth— she will always love him.

**Author's Note:**

> feeling weird about posting this as it's so short but it was something i needed out of my system.


End file.
